In Arresting Move, School’s Board Drops Khashoggi

Saudi financier Adnan Khashoggi has been dropped from the American University Board of Trustees--not because of his indictment on charges of racketeering, fraud and obstruction of justice--but because he is a no-show. Khashoggi, once reputed to have been among the world’s richest men, was named to the Washington school’s board in 1983 but, according to AU President Richard Berendzen, has attended only one board meeting, staying about 30 minutes. “We have no address for him,” Berendzen told the Eagle, the AU student newspaper. It is true that for a time after the indictment was issued Khashoggi was a fugitive, traveling frequently through Europe and the Middle East. However, his current address is Bern, Switzerland, where he was jailed last month for extradition to the United States to face charges that he helped Ferdinand E. Marcos funnel millions of dollars out of the Philippines when he was president to buy paintings and real estate in New York. Meanwhile, a column in the AU student paper called for the university to drop Khashoggi’s name from its new sports complex, calling it an “embarrassment.” Khashoggi pledged $5 million to the facility in 1984.

--No more free rides at Chicago City Hall. Mayor Richard M. Daley, who took office just over a week ago, ordered all cars parked illegally outside City Hall towed away, including those of five city officials. Daley’s press secretary, Avis LaVelle, said that to set an example, Daley ordered his limousine parked in the city’s underground lot. Normally, the vehicle idles outside City Hall. Will Daley make the tow order a daily occurrence? “Oh, I think people will get the message,” LaVelle said. She should know. Hers was one of the cars towed.

--FBI headquarters was paid a visit by an unlikely group of tourists--12 retired Soviet admirals and generals. The former top Soviet military officers, in the United States for a conference sponsored by a private defense group, saw FBI exhibits on fingerprinting, its famous crime laboratory and a firearms demonstration. But perhaps of greatest interest to the group was a display showing various Soviet spies captured in recent years and one in particular entitled “The Walker Family,” the spy ring broken up by the FBI and masterminded by former Navy communications specialist John A. Walker Jr. He pleaded guilty to selling some of the nation’s most vital secrets to Moscow for nearly two decades.